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The Possession (2012)
The Possession is a 2012 supernatural horror film directed by Ole Bornedal and produced by Sam Raimi. A newly separated couple Clyde (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Stephanie Brenek (Kyra Sedgwick)live in different homes. After Clyde picks up their two children, Emily "Em" (Natasha Calis) and Hannah (Madison Davenport), for the weekend, they stop at a yard sale where Em becomes intrigued by a dybbuk's old box that has Hebrew inscriptions engraved on it. Clyde buys the box for Em. That night, Em hears whispering coming from it. She opens it and finds a tooth, a corpse of a moth, a wooden figurine, and a ring, which she begins to wear. Em becomes solitary and her behavior becomes increasingly sinister, to the point where she stabs her father in the hand with a fork. The house becomes infested with moths. At school, Em violently attacks a classmate when he takes her box, resulting in a meeting with Clyde and Stephanie and the principal and teacher. Em's teacher recommends that she spend time away from the box so it is left in the classroom. That night, curious about the noises from the box, the teacher tries to open it, but a malevolent force, the dybbuk throws her out a window and she dies. One day, Em tells Clyde about an invisible woman who lives in her box and says that Em is "special". Alarmed by her behavior, Clyde attempts to dispose of the box but Em finds it again and begins conversing with the dybbuk. Clyde takes the box to a university professor who tells him it is a dybbuk box that dates back to the 1920s; it was used to contain an ancient Jewish demon. Clyde enters Em's room and reads from the Torah; a force hurls the Torah across the room. Clyde then travels to a Hasidic community in Brooklyn and learns from a Jew named Tzadok (Matisyahu) that the possession has three main stages; in the third stage the dybbuk latches onto the host, becoming one entity with it. The only way to defeat the dybbuk is to lock it back into the box via a forced ritual. Upon further examination on the box, Tzadok learns that the demon's name is "Abyzou", or the "Taker of Children". Em has a seizure and is taken to the hospital for an MRI. During the procedure, Stephanie and Hannah are horrified when they see the dybbuk's face in the images next to Em's heart. Clyde and Tzadok join the family at the hospital and attempt to conduct an exorcism. Clyde survives Em's attack but becomes possessed. Tzadok performs a successful exorcism; the dybbuk crawls back into the box. The family is reunited, with Clyde and Stephanie's love rekindled. Tzadok drives away with the box in Clyde's vehicle. The car is hit by a truck, killing him. The box lands safely from the wreckage and whispering is heard from it, the same Polish rhyme heard at the beginning of the film.